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COBrBIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 




Clifford B. Markle. 



A YANKEE PRISONER 
IN HUNLAND 



BY 



CLIFFORD MILTON MARKLE 

> I 
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. 102nd U. S. INFANTRY 
26th DIVISION 



PUBLISHED BY 

WHITLOCK'S BOOK STORE, INC. 

NEW HAVEN, CONN. 

1920 



4> 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
WHITLOCK'S BOOK STORE, INC. 



PRINTED BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

OEG 13 1020 
g)CU605197 



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{ 



TO MY MOTHER 



Clifford M. Markle, the author of the following 
sketch, was an employe in my office in New Haven for 
a considerable period. He was loyal, industrious and 
reliable. When the war came on, he joined the Medical 
Corps and was sent to France and was ordered to the 
Front. In one of the first engagements of American 
troops in April, 1918, he was captured and the follow- 
ing pages are an interesting account of his experiences 
as a prisoner of war in Germany. I am glad to have 
the pleasure of reading it and of commending it to 
others. 

WM. H. TAFT. 

Pointe au Pic, 

Province of Quebec, Canada. 

August 29, 1920. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



A Yankee Prisoner in Hunland 








7 


A Description of the Camp at Darmstadt 






13 


Incidents of Camp Life at Darmstadt 






17 


Air Raids ..... 






38 


Sundays 










39 


A Lucky Accident 










41 


French from St. Quentin 










43 


Beginning of the End 










45 


Kriegs Fertigs 










48 


Westward Bound . 










50 



A YANKEE PRISONER IN 
HUNLAND 

On April 20, 1918, occurred the Battle of Seicheprey, 
which will go down in American history as the Lexing- 
ton of the World War. It was at Seicheprey that 2000 
Prussian shock troops were sent over to overwhelm a 
mere handful of Yankees, but much to the disappoint- 
ment and chagrin of the German general who planned 
the attack, the doughboys, fighting like demons, drove 
the Prussian horde back, inflicting heavy casualties. 
Statistics show that the Germans lost four to our one. 

As a first-aid man, attached to the infantry, I was 
captured, along with a few other medical men while 
working in a front-line dugout, and carried into Ger- 
many, where we were regarded as curiosities by the 
majority of the German people, who thought of the 
Americans as a cross between an Indian and a cowboy. 
This conclusion the Boche had reached from seeing 
moving pictures depicting Buffalo Bill and others of 
his type. 

The moment I was in the hands of the Germans at 
our front-line trench they stripped me of my leather 
jerkin, which I wore outside of my blouse and also my 
French gas-mask. All the men who wore rubber boots 
were deprived of them and forced to walk in their 
stocking feet across No Man's Land, suffering excru- 
ciatingly, as the barbed-wire entanglements cut their 
feet. One American first-aid man was confined in a 
German hospital for five months as a result of this 
brutality. Even to-day this soldier, who was a chum 



8 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

of mine, walks poorly, as infection continually reasserts 
itself. 

After reaching the German first-line trench, which 
was thronged with shock troops awaiting the word to 
go over, with both American and German barrages still 
very violent, four Americans, including myself, were 
ordered to carry a wounded German soldier back to 
their battalion aid station. Before doing this, however, 
our pockets were rifled, watches, rings, fountain-pens, 
and francs in silver were taken from us and kept for 
souvenirs, but letters. Bibles, or personal trinkets were 
returned. 

In transporting the wounded Hun, who was slung 
in a piece of canvas attached to a pole, one man at each 
end balancing it on his shoulder, the arrangement of 
the so-called stretcher forced us to walk very slowly, 
as the German swung from side to side like the pendu- 
lum of a clock, nearly throwing us off our balance, 
especially while passing through shell holes filled with 
mud and water. We were going over the top along 
the communication trench while the German first-aid 
men who escorted us and were armed to the teeth, having 
a rifle, knife, and huge pistol similar to that carried by 
the infamous Captain Kidd, walked in the trench with 
pistols leveled at the backs of our heads ready to blow 
out our brains if we made a false move. So you see 
our chances of escape at this particular stage of the 
game were very slight. 

Upon reaching the German aid station our patient, 
who had suffered agony, had his wound dressed and 
was transported by means of a narrow-gauge railway 
to a German base hospital behind the lines. 

We were more than glad to be relieved of our load, 
but unfortunately for me I had hardly reached the 
German third-line trench when a "Flamenwerfer," or 
flame-thrower, liquid fire apparatus, was hoisted on 
my already weary back by some unsympathetic son of 



A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 9 

Prussia, and I had to march about ten kilometers thus 
equipped. I had hiked with heavy packs in France, 
but this hike excelled for length any twenty kilometer 
hike, or so it seemed. 

As we were passing through Alsace, there were many 
French people in every doorway, and when they learned 
that the prisoners were Americans, the women and girls 
wept bitterly, for they well knew what fate was in 
store for those who had the ill luck to be captives among 
the Huns. 

Queer as it may seem, some of these same people 
were the ones who greeted us seven months later after 
our release from prison camps at the beginning of the 
armistice, with cries of "Vive I'Americain," as we passed 
through Alsace from Metz to Toul en route to the "land 
of the free and the home of the brave." 

About noon we reached the town of Thiacourt, where 
we were herded into a church like a flock of sheep, 
reminding me of the poem "Evangeline," when the 
British drove the French Canadians of Acadia into 
the village church. 

Here a German general who spoke English fluently 
addressed us as follows: "So you Americans call 
America a free country, do you? Well, it is not free, 
but Germany is, and you ought to be glad that you have 
been captured, as we shall soon demoralize America as 
we have France, England, and Russia. One thing 
more, if we ever run across your regiment again we shall 
give no quarter, for to-day the flower of the German 
army has been severely shattered by your stubborn 
resistance against overwhelming odds." 

We grinned at that speech, for although we were 
prisoners and knew not how many days we had left on 
this planet, it did our hearts good to know that the 
mettle of the American army had proved to be the best 
in the world. 

At the conclusion of his brief speech, the general left 



10 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

the church, and we were served with "blut-wurst," a 
sort of bologna, black bread, and a barley soup, which 
tasted mighty good, as the majority of us had not had 
a meal since the previous night and were famished. 

Following the meal post-cards were distributed which 
contained the following message, short and to the point, 
"I am a prisoner of war in Germany." At the extreme 
left bottom were the three words, "well, sick, wounded." 
We crossed out the two not applicable to our particular 
case, and signed our names at the extreme right bottom. 
These cards were supposed to be sent to Washington, 
D. C, but later inquiries failed to prove that such was 
the case. 

Upon the completion of the cards we were marched 
from the church to the station (Bahnhof) through 
streets jammed with German soldiers of all types, in- 
fantry, machine gunners, artillery, aviators, and even 
S. O. S. (Service of Supply), who had heard of the 
capture of the "Amerikaners," and were anxious to 
catch a glimpse of us. But to our surprise and forced 
admiration hardly a remark was passed as we marched 
along. 

Entraining at seven o'clock we rode for about an 
hour, when we detrained at the town of Conflans, which 
contained prisoners of all the Allied nationalities, Eng- 
lish, French, Italians, Belgians, Cossacks, Russians, 
Siberians, Boumanians, and Serbians. 

We marched a short distance to a building which con- 
sisted of a theater on the ground floor and two vacant 
rooms on the second floor. Into the vacant rooms we 
were herded and ordered to sleep there for the night. 

The rooms contained some bed-sacks sparsely filled 
with bits of paper, threads, and rags, a stove, minus its 
fuel, and two windows whose panes were covered by two 
blankets to prevent any light in the room from shining 
out and betraying the building to Allied aeroplanes 
flying over for bombing purposes. 



A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 11 

As it was only April 20, it was still chilly, and only 
a few of us had overcoats, so that night we secured scant 
sleep. I had hit upon the idea of walking up and down 
the better part of the night and of huddling over the 
stove, imagining that there was heat within, and then 
when daybreak came I pulled down the two blankets, 
rolled up in them, and snatched a couple of hours' much 
needed rest. 

About seven o'clock in the morning we were awak- 
ened. I say "awakened" because that is the logical 
thing following a night ; but as a matter of fact, the ma- 
jority were already out of the "Land of Nod." The 
guards closed in, and we marched downstairs into the 
adjoining building, where we were handed a wash- 
basin apiece containing what the Germans called coffee, 
but was really made from ground acorns boiled down. 
The Americans termed it "acorn-water." We soon 
became accustomed to this liquid, as it was our break- 
fast for many long days following, but we never grew 
to like it. With this bowl of "coffee" we were given a 
small piece of bread about four inches square by one 
inch, which we were told would be our bread ration "per 
diem." 

After "breakfasting," details were picked from the 
men and carrying bricks, digging foundations, chopping 
wood, shoveling coal, and carrying flour constituted our 
amusements until noon, when a bowl, alias wash-basin, 
of soup was rationed out to each man. This soup con- 
sisted principally of what was known as "Kuhlrube," 
or in the vernacular, cow-turnips, with an occasional 
bean or minute particle of fish. The latter item the 
Germans procured from the North Sea, or, according 
to them, the German Ocean. 

In the afternoon the same outdoor sports were in- 
dulged in as characterized the morning. At six o'clock 
another delicious hot bowl of "acorn-water" was served 
to the, by now, half-starved Americans. At the conclu- 



12 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

sion of the evening meal we endeavored to sleep, and 
as we were all very tired soon passed into dreamland, 
where we visualized huge stacks of pies, ice cream, and 
such dainties, only to be awakened by the cold and dis- 
cover the real conditions. 

The next day our names, rank, and organizations 
were taken, and the Germans said they would cable to 
Washington, D. C, via the International Red Cross at 
Berne, Switzerland, all the data concerning us, which 
relieved our minds considerably, as we knew that our 
folks would be worrying a great deal as to our where- 
abouts and general condition. 

A German minister with a long, grim face inter- 
viewed group after group of us, asking us why 
America entered the war. He said, "America entered 
the war because of the money she had lent England and 
France, and had to go to war to save it." Everywhere 
the retort came to him, "We went to war because of 
the looting of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusi- 
tania" and before he got through with it the German 
dominie knew something more of American sentiment 
than ever before. This minister was, undoubtedly, a 
spy sent among us to get information which the officers 
were unable to obtain. 

On Friday, which was six days after the Battle of 
Seicheprey, we were given a bath and de-cooterized. 

Saturday morning, early, we left Conflans by second- 
class coaches for the French prison camp at Darmstadt, 
passing through Metz, en route. We changed trains 
at Metz. In this city a large crowd had assembled at 
the depot and its vicinity, news of the Americans having 
preceded us, to verify the hardly believable rumors that 
America really did have men on the firing line. 

Here occurred the only occasion where I ever saw the 
iron discipline of the German army violated. Marching 
with us was a ' lieutenant-doctor who was captured 
while doing his duty in taking care of the wounded at 



DESCRIPTION OF CAMP AT DARMSTADT 13 

his battalion aid station in Seicheprey. Of course, 
we were completely surrounded by guards with fixed 
bayonets, and this fact undoubtedly saved the lieu- 
tenant's life. An intoxicated German soldier standing 
along the line of march made a thrust at the lieutenant 
with his bayonet, at the same time shouting "Ver- 
dammte Amerikaner" ; but the guard parried the mur- 
derous blow with the butt of his own rifle, thereby sav- 
ing the doctor's life and another blot on Germany's 
already stained escutcheon. From Metz the American 
doctor was sent to an ofiicers' camp, from which place 
he was soon transferred to conduct a hospital for 
American wounded prisoners of war. 



A DESCRIPTION OF THE CAMP AT 
DARMSTADT 

The entire camp was surrounded by barbed-wire 
fences, twelve feet high with double strands at the top, 
making escape somewhat difficult. 

Every seventy feet was a sentry box at which was 
stationed a member of the "Landsturm," or reserve 
soldier of the German army. 

Within the camp, which was subdivided into sections 
with a certain number of barracks to a section, barbed 
wire separated the French from the Americans. A dirt 
path ran between the French quarters and the Ameri- 
can quarters, which was six feet wide and terminated 
at one end in the barracks and guard-house, where our 
captors lived, and at the other at the main entrance to 
the camp. 

The French would sometimes throw their black bread 
rations across the barrier to the Americans and there 
followed a wild scramble for the possession of the 
precious "staff of life" even though the "staff" was 
black. 



14 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

Right here I may say that the German bread con- 
tained about as much nourishment as a piece of wet 
sawdust, and tasted very similar. 

At Darmstadt the soup consisted mostly of meal 
gruel, cow-turnips, black mushrooms, beans, and some- 
times a potato. 

Upon our arrival at Darmstadt we were asked our 
occupations, and we thought the work would be based 
on our answers, but later learned through bitter experi- 
ence that a doughboy who said he was a traveling sales- 
man was usually assigned to a coal-mine, and that one 
who signed as a farmer or day-laborer stayed in camp 
on Red Cross Committees or received work which re- 
quired a minimum amount of muscle. It was the same 
with all the prisoners of the Allied Powers. 

Of course we joked the lad who put "traveling sales- 
man" on his blank. He might have surmised that as a 
prisoner of war his traveling would be more or less 
limited, and his sale of goods small. 

At Darmstadt we found a few English, a dozen 
Americans who had been captured while on raids pre- 
vious to April 20, and some Italians and Russians ; but 
its population consisted chiefly of French, who num- 
bered five thousand. 

We were quartered in barracks which were clean and 
airy; we received two blankets, a bed-sack filled with 
bits of paper, rags, and thread, and also a bowl for 
soup. 

Outside each barracks were wash-stands and faucets 
providing running water which was also "Trinken- 
wasser," and as such was fit to drink without chlorina- 
tion or boiling. 

We arrived at this camp on the 28th of April, and 
remained there until the 1st of June. During that 
period we received four inoculations and one vaccina- 
tion, administered to us by a very skilled German 
doctor who had been a prisoner of war in France. The 



DESCRIPTION OF CAMP AT DARMSTADT 15 

Germans exchanged for him two French doctors and 
ten French Red Cross men, for they considered this sur- 
geon very valuable for their work at Darmstadt both 
because of his professional skill and his fluent French 
tongue. 

Every morning we received our bowl of "acorn- 
water" and our thin ration of black bread, which had to 
do us all day. 

Usually men would be picked for detail by our own 
non-commissioned officers, and the work started at 
seven o'clock, ending at six o'clock. 

There were several different kinds of work for the 
prisoners, and old "Ein-und-zwanzig," who was the 
German sergeant in charge of us, had his hands full 
arranging suitable work for the Yanks. 

The worst detail was shoveling coal, and the best was 
package detail. 

The camp was situated near a large aviation field, 
and every day a detail of fifty men would march down 
there to work all day. Of course we all tried to "duck" 
the coal-pile job, but one was never sure at which end 
of the line to stay. If one remained at the head of the 
formation upon arrival at the field, as like as not the 
sergeant would hand out coal shovels to the first ten 
men. On the other hand if one remained at the rear of 
the column, the Boche would distribute coal shovels 
commencing at the rear; so it was a constant source of 
irritation to the exceptionallj^ fastidious among us to 
figure out a way to elude the Ethiopian detail. 

As Darmstadt was a French camp established in 
1914, the French had things pretty well systematized, 
and food from home as well as from the government 
via the Red Cross at Berne, Switzerland, arrived daily 
for assortment and distribution. To expedite the dis- 
tribution of these packages, many of which had to go to 
French prisoners who were out at work all over Ger- 
many, a committee composed of French non-commis- 



16 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

sioned officers, permanently stationed in the camp, and 
a detail of French soldiers, who for one reason or 
another could not do hard manual labor, were appointed 
by the German authorities in charge of the camp. 

Fortunately for the few Americans in the camp, the 
comimittee and its aid-de-camps were very much behind 
in their work, and the storehouse at the station was piled 
high with as yet undistributed packages ; so the Ameri- 
cans were called into service and responded nobly to 
the summons. Accordingly, a detail of fifteen men was 
selected and at five o'clock on the following morning 
marched to the depot at Darmstadt, which was about 
five kilometers from the camp. 

We certainly presented a motley spectacle to the Ger- 
man onlookers. Some of us were clad in Russian uni- 
forms, others in old French costumes, and five of the 
men, wearing wooden shoes, stumped clumsily along 
trying to keep up with the rest of us. After reaching 
the storehouse, we were assigned to our work, one 
American, one Frenchman, and one German inspector 
in a group of three. As prisoners, we opened the pack- 
ages, the German inspected its contents, and we then 
replaced the articles and tied up the packages. 

An average package from home contained the fol- 
lowing : a small piece of soap, biscuits, wearing apparel, 
chocolate, potatoes, macaroni, tea, coffee, sugar, rice, 
salt, pepper, beans, and tobacco. Although nearly 
every package contained, biscuits, the biscuits were ap- 
propriated by the Hun, as the French government sent 
a ration of hard bread to its prisoners, and the Germans 
took advantage of this fact. Cigarette papers were 
also removed from the packages, as the Hun feared 
messages might be written on one of the thin sheets in 
the middle of the bunch. 

Naturally it was a great temptation to us to steal 
some of the food and carry it back to camp for our own 
use, but as it was too much like "robbing Peter to pay 




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INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 17 

Paul" we resisted the impulse. The French were our 
Allies, and as such we were friends in a common cause 
against the Boche. 

At noon we lunched with the French committee, on 
macaroni, bread, chocolate, and coffee — a great im- 
provement on our usual noonday repast. 

The afternoon passed quickly, and we were soon back 
in camp having really enjoyed ourselves. 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT 
DARMSTADT 

The French received a great deal of canned goods 
from their government, fish, meat, and vegetables. The 
empty cans were collected and flattened by means of 
a huge plank operated on a hinge against a block. Then 
the cans were shoveled into carts drawn and pushed by 
prisoners, who transported the cans to the Darmstadt 
freight yards, where they were loaded onto box-cars, 
and sent away to be melted up so as to extract the metal 
of any value. 

Another act illustrative of the German ingenuity: as 
is generally known, the American helmet has for a 
bumper on the inside a circle of small rubber cushions, 
which are placed so as to soften the shock of a blow 
striking the outside of the helmet. The Germans 
ordered us to turn in all our helmets, thinking they could 
extract the bumpers, thereby furnishing themselves 
with a small but precious quantity of rubber. Through 
the French interpreter at the camp we were notified of 
the Germans' intentions, and secretly each one of us 
extracted the rubber cushions one by one from our 
helmets, burying them surreptitiously. The next day, 
the Germans collected the helmets, but much to their 
chagrin found the rubber missing. Of course they as- 
sembled the Americans and wanted to know why the 



18 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

rubber had been removed, but our interpreters merely 
shook their heads and repHed that nothing could be done 
about the matter. 

We were permitted to write one letter every two 
weeks, which of course was censored by the Germans. 
The difficulty of procuring the proper writing paper 
made even one letter in two weeks impossible for some 
of us, as the paper required had the prison headings 
stamped on it, and could only be obtained at the camp 
canteen at a cost of one-half mark per sheet and en- 
velope. Due to the fact that the average American 
doughboy is "financially embarrassed" a day or two 
after every pay day the majority of us didn't have a 
"sou" or rather a "pfennig" when we were taken pris- 
oners. I wrote a letter May 2nd which was received by 
my folks in the States on June 16th, not such a long 
time getting there, all things considered. 

It was the custom for the Huns to pick a detail of 
ten men for kitchen police, or in the American parlance 
"K. P." The duties of the K. P.'s were to peel potatoes 
for the soup; one bowl of soup usually contained one 
portion of one "spud"; therefore, we didn't have so 
many that we couldn't eat a few outside of the regular 
menu. Well, to make a long story short, potatoes 
began to appear mysteriously in the barracks, and the 
next problem was to cook them. Some of us procured 
wood obtained by pulling the pickets lining the gardens 
in the camp, and surreptitiously prepared a fire after 
posting our own "plain-clothes" guards, who were to 
notify us when the Boche sentinels approached the im- 
mediate vicinity. Everything went along finely, and 
three of us had cooked our "spuds" ; the fourth man was 
just putting his potatoes over the fire when the German 
sergeant, old "Ein-und-zwanzig," so called by the 
Americans for his especially gutteral pronunciation of 
"twenty-one," came running around the corner of the 
barracks in search of trouble, and he was not disap- 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 19 

pointed. However, the potato cooker, out of the corner 
of his eye (the American watchers had run at the first 
glimpse) saw "Ein-und-zwanzig" and grabbing the 
"spuds" jumped up and started to run; but the Hun's 
fingers closed on the Yank coat-tail and clung there 
with the tenacity of a bulldog. As it happened, when 
the American started to run he was headed straight for 
the guard-house; so the oddly assorted pair continued 
their flight until the door was reached. The sergeant 
shoved his man roughly into a cell and there he was 
confined for a week, with a cup of water and two thin 
slices of bread for that period. After that example 
the theft of the potatoes diminished remarkably and the 
starved expression on our faces increased considerably. 

Tobacco was another source of great irritation, or 
rather the lack of it. The poor fellows would go prowl- 
ing around trying to scrape up enough for one cigarette 
with their noses to the ground like a fox terrier hot on 
the scent, and it would take them all their spare time 
to secure enough of "the makings," for even a thin 
cigarette, as the Germans smoked their cigarettes down 
till they burned their whiskers on account of the scarcity 
of tobacco in "Deutschland." 

One evening much to our surprise and delight we 
were told that we could attend the moving pictures at 
the French theater in the camp. This theater had been 
built by the prisoners who were permanently located at 
camp, and seated about five hundred. The price of ad- 
mission was fifty pfennigs or a half mark. Some of us 
had received a mark that day from the camp authorities 
for the work of unloading freight cars a few days pre- 
vious, which enabled us to go and take a chum along. 
An orchestra composed of French musicians furnished 
the musical program and a French interpreter trans- 
lated the words of the movies, which were German, as 
the picture progressed. Fortunatelj^ for us one of the 
Americans with our party spoke French fluently; so he 



20 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

translated the French interpreter's words. The most 
interesting feature of the evening to the Americans was 
a fihn depicting the Germanic conception of America 
as revealed in a wild and woolly scene. We cheered 
frantically until the German guards rushed in, silencing 
the racket by threats of annihilation. The American 
spirit was hard to break, and the Germans realized that 
they had an entirely different set of human beings to 
deal with when the Yanks were around. After the 
cinema was concluded we returned to our barracks, 
thinking less harshly of our captors, for we were grate- 
ful for the evening's entertainment. 

During a Catholic holiday, the Germans announced 
that the Americans who were of that faith would not be 
obliged to work, but the Protestants would have to work 
as usual. When the time came for the Catholics to fall 
out of ranks, a little Jew joined them. The German or 
"Jerry" sergeant, as the English called him, knew this 
soldier was a Jew, for he was one of the American inter- 
preters. The sergeant said, "Why don't you go to 
work? You are not a Catholic." The American 
replied, "I am a Catholic Jew." At this answer, the 
sergeant laughed and allowed him to stay with his 
adopted brethren. 

TfS Tf» vfS ^ 

On Friday, the 31st of May, fifty of us, including ten 
non-commissioned offcers, were selected to go to Lim- 
burg, the English prison camp, on the following day. 
We were given a bath and de-cooterized, and our hair 
was clipped off close to our heads. Early the next 
morning, we were marched, heavily guarded, to the 
depot to entrain for Limburg. While hiking to the 
station we passed some German soldiers, working with 
pick and shovel alongside of the road. One of them, 
upon seeing us, straightened up from his work, and 
pointed the shovel at us as if it were a gun. Immediately 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 21 

the sergeant in charge of our guards called a halt, 
walked over to the offender, and took his name, rank, 
and number, concluding the incident by remarking, 
"You will hear from this later." This illustrates the 
iron discipline of the German army. 

Entraining in third-class coaches, we rode until two 
o'clock in the afternoon, when we detrained and 
marched from the depot up a long grade to the Lim- 
burg camp, located on high ground overlooking the 
town of the same name. As usual we were the cynosure 
of many hostile eyes, but by this time we were becoming 
accustomed to being scrutinized like side-show exhibits 
and stared back defiantly at the inhabitants. 

Upon our arrival at the "Camp of Mystery," so 
called by reason of its many unaccounted for deaths, we 
were ordered to break ranks and await the soup which 
would be served to us. Before soup our name, rank, 
occupation, and religion were ascertained, after which 
the commander of the camp inquired the number of 
Red Cross or first-aid men among us. There was one 
other beside myself. We stepped to the front, showed 
the identification disks, and gave our numbers stamped 
on our Red Cross brassards, which we wore on our left 
arms. After our records were taken we were marched 
to the sleeping barracks, which were located in that 
section of the camp known as "prison quarters," for 
there were quartered men who committed some infrac- 
tion of camp rules, thereby making themselves "pris- 
oners among prisoners." It was customary to place 
new arrivals in this area, where they remained until 
definitely disposed of. 

We slept that night on the usual bed-sack and two 
blankets, awaking next morning to black bread a little 
blacker than that issued at Darmstadt, and a bowl of 
"acorn- water." At noon, we had some cabbage soup, 
but after dinner to our delight the English committee 
sent over to the Americans a special package of food 



22 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

for each one of us. It consisted of a piece of chocolate, 
EngHsh biscuits, canned soup, canned meat, rice, maca- 
roni, tea, jam, butter, and a minute portion of soap. 
Every man received practically the same assortment, 
and, believe me, we made a huge hole in that package 
right away. 

Only a few details were arranged for us, such as 
shoveling coal and breaking ground for planting in the 
vicinity of the camp. 

Affairs ran along this way until June 10, upon which 
date we were given a warm shower bath, two pieces of 
cloth about a foot square for socks, a pair of wooden 
shoes, a black overcoat having a yellow band around 
the left sleeve stamped "Kriegsgefangener," or "pris- 
oner of war," underclothing, Russian trousers, and coat 
if needed, bearing the same markings. 

The non-commissioned officers were held in camp to 
attend to the distribution of the American Red Cross 
packages, which were expected to arrive soon; but the 
rest of us were shipped to various towns to work in the 
mines, on the farms, or in the factories. 

On June 11, an American corporal, who, according 
to the French rating by which the Germans judged us, 
was not considered a non-commissioned officer, and 
another private and myself, were marched to the Lim- 
burg depot, under guard, to entrain for Duisdorf . This 
town of Duisdorf was only a few kilometers from Co- 
logne, and we could see the mighty spires of the famous 
Cologne Cathedral ; but unfortunately for us, not being 
Cook's tourists, this completed our acquaintance with 
the mighty edifice. After riding four hours on the train 
we reached our destination, and marched a short dis- 
tance to a "Leder-Fabrik," or in the vernacular, "leather 
factory," directly controlled by the German government. 

Our feelings may easily be imagined when the guard 
informed us that we would now be making shoes to 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 23 

equip the German soldiers who were marching to the 
front. We resolved to do as little work as was possible. 
The guard who escorted us from the camp to the fac- 
tory was employed previous to the war as a foreman in 
this very place; so he had charge of our work here. 

We were taken to a room, fifteen by fifty, containing 
sleeping bunks for ten men, a plain wooden table, two 
benches, a shelf with bowls, spoons, and cups upon it, 
and a set of hooks which were used to hang towels on. 

The room adjoining our quarters housed the guard, 
and contained a bed, table, desk, two chairs, wash-bowl, 
and clothes-press. 

At eight o'clock seven Russian prisoners who worked 
at the factory entered the room. Fortunately for us, 
our corporal was of Polish parentage, and of the seven 
Russians one could speak Polish, which allowed a very 
enlightening conversation to take place. Most of the 
Russians had been prisoners for over three years, and 
had tried to escape many times, but had never succeeded. 

The first question they asked us was, "Have you a 
compass?" and they were greatly disappointed when we 
replied in the negative. Outside our room was a corri- 
dor where we washed and hung our clothes for the night, 
so as to make escape practically impossible, for we had 
to pass through the guard's room to reach the corridor 
and the doors of both were securely locked each night 
at nine o'clock. That night our soup was quite palat- 
able and we soon went to sleep, dreaming of making 
our way out of Germany with the aid of the most 
daring of our new Russian friends. 

The next morning we arose, had our "coffee," but this 
time bread with honey on it, and sugar in our coflFee. 
We were so surprised at this unusual "breakfast" that 
we wondered if we were being fattened for the 
slaughter. At seven o'clock, in company with the Rus- 
sians, we went to work at our various jobs. This fac- 
tory, being very small, employed only twenty men all 



24 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

told, ten prisoners and ten German civilians who were 
too old or physically inelegible for active military service 
in the trenches. 

The leather was manufactured from the bark of 
evergreen trees, which came into the factory tied in 
bundles of from fifteen to twenty trees. The bark was 
thrown into a grinding machine which pulverized it, and 
was then soaked in vats containing toughening and ad- 
hesive solutions with a small percentage of real pow- 
dered leather. These vats were kept under terrific heat, 
and a lump of the ingredients upon being removed was 
kneaded and pounded like a piece of dough, till it 
eventually resembled a strip of leather, about three feet 
square. 

My task was to carry the bundles of bark from the 
storehouse to the grinding machines at both of which 
worked German civilians, feeding the bark into the 
machines. If I got behind in my work I would slip the 
belt from the wheel connected with the power when the 
Hun wasn't looking, thereby having a few minutes' time 
to catch up, while the old Boche fussed around putting 
the belt on the wheel again. 

We worked from seven a.m. until nine a.m. when 
we went back to our quarters for twenty minutes' rest 
and a bowl of soup. At nine-twenty we returned to 
work, and at twelve o'clock an hour was given us for 
soup containing a few pieces of bacon for flavor, which 
proved to be the best since our sojourn in Germany. 
At one o'clock we returned to work until four, when a 
half hour in which to eat our honeyed bread and sweet- 
ened coffee broke the monotony of the afternoon. Five 
days a week we worked until seven o'clock, and on Sat- 
urdays until eight o'clock. Following our work on 
Saturday came a bath, with German soap (ninety per 
cent sand), and clean clothes. Quite an improvement 
all around over our previous life since being forcibly 
obliged to dwell among the Huns. 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 25 

On Sunday, it being a good, clear sunshiny day, we 
were allowed to take a walk, naturally accompanied by 
our guard. We walked to a near-by hill, where a fine 
view of Cologne could be had through the naked ej^e. 
Thousands of factory chimneys belching forth smoke 
and flame gave evidence of the mighty efforts Germany 
was making to win the war. One of the Russians who 
could speak German told me that he worked one winter 
in Cologne and it was very hard disagreeable work, with 
very little food. I never dreamed that two months 
later I would be working in one of the worst "sweat- 
shops" at Cologne. It was a case of "where ignorance 
is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." 

Upon returning to the factory, we were given a 
pound of sugar, half a pound of civilian bread, and a 
pound of "blut-wurst" (bologna). Civilian bread was 
a little lighter than prisoner's bread, but it had the same 
sawdust taste. This ration was our monthly stipend 
which happened to be due on this day. Nine marks a 
week was our pay and with it we could buy cigarettes 
and beer, both articles delivered to our room. The 
guard would also buy candy, tooth-paste, tooth-brushes, 
if wanted, and deduct the cost from our week's salary. 

One morning, arising early as it was my turn to 
sweep the quarters, the guard called me and said I was 
to leave at six-thirty to work on a farm. Naturally I 
was surprised, but the guard explained to me that be- 
cause I was a Red Cross man a farm was selected for 
me, so that I could have better food. This explanation 
was satisfactory to me, and I left the factory without 
any regrets whatsoever. The guard who took me to 
the train was very considerate, and permitted me, while 
we were traveling to our destination, to eat the bread 
and sugar which I had stowed away in my pockets. 
TSHien we reached Wahn, on the outskirts of which was 
located the farm, I was marched to a small village, 
where the prison barracks had been established. 



26 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

French, English, Italians, Russians, and Siberians pre- 
sented a motley spectacle assembled before the barracks 
for roll-call, as it was noontime. When they learned 
that I was an American the English asked me all sorts 
of questions about the war — How long would it con- 
tinue? How many Americans were there in France? 
Was England starving? (as they had been told by 
their German captors). I replied as best I could and 
they were very much heartened, as my answers were all 
good news for them, as the majority of these English 
and French had been prisoners of war for more than 
three years. 

I had a meal with the French and English, consisting 
of tea, biscuits, rice, chocolate, and cheese, all of which 
they had received from their respective governments 
through the International Red Cross in Switzerland; 
one package weighing fifteen pounds was the average 
weekly portion. After eating, the Germans gave me a 
pair of high leather boots and a pair of wooden shoes, 
which I took with me to the farm, about fifteen minutes' 
walk from the village. The guard who escorted me 
from the prison-lager to the farmhouse wore the Iron 
Cross. While at school I had learned a smattering of 
German and was able to understand aided by the sign 
language. I asked the Hun in what manner he had 
acquired the decoration. He told me while on a raid 
he became separated from his comrades and took refuge 
in a shell hole until daybreak. At dawn, looking over 
the edge of the shell hole he espied two "Tommies" who 
had evidently suffered the same fate. He shot both of 
them before they were aware of his presence and carried 
back to his own lines papers of value which he took from 
the dead bodies. Usually after a soldier had been 
awarded the Iron Cross and wounded he was sent to the 
rear to perform guard duty for a certain period of time, 
before again being put in the front-line trenches. 

Arriving at the farmhouse where I was to begin my 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 27 

rural labors, the guard turned me over to the farmer, 
who already employed four Russian prisoners, and for 
the first time since my capture I was without a military 
guard. My first inclination was to plan for an escape 
that night but on second thought I decided to wait a few 
days until I could acquire a compass and a pair of shoes 
with which I would be able to walk a long distance in a 
short space of time, my present boots being several sizes 
too large for me and better fitted for a Goliath. 

The farmer's family consisted of himself, his wife, 
and one girl of fifteen years. The farmhouse was a 
one-story building, constructed so as to form a huge 
letter L. Everything was scrupulously neat and clean. 
The dairy, which proved to be the scene of my labors, 
was above reproach from a sanitary standpoint and con- 
tained thirty head of fine cattle. 

I had a dinner of milk, soup, ham, black bread, and 
potatoes, which was served to me and one of the Rus- 
sians at the kitchen table. Of course the "Rusky" 
couldn't speak a word of English, though as he had been 
a prisoner for three years he had acquired a little knowl- 
edge of German; so our conversation didn't prove very 
interesting. However, he made me understand his 
main points with the aid of the sign language thrown in 
for good measure. When we had finished our meal the 
Russian, who was called "Alec" by the farmer, told me 
that we were to take the milk that had been acquired 
that noon and put it through the separator. This was 
quickly done and we adjourned to the dairy, where we 
fed the cattle, and cleaned out the place. At four 
o'clock we returned to the house for "Kaffee-trinken." 
Every day at nine in the morning and at four in the 
afternoon the Germans stopped work for twenty min- 
utes to drink their imitation coffee and eat their equally 
imitation bread. This custom was continued through- 
out the entire period of the war, although the enjoj^^ment 
was greatly lessened on account of the quality and quan- 



28 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

tity of both bread and coffee. The Germans imported 
huge quantities of coffee, copper, and rubber, from 
Brazil, previous to the declaration of war, and as long 
after as the British blockade permitted. But her supply- 
diminished rapidly, and at the time of my imprisonment, 
all of these imports were practically non-existent. 
However, we had milk in our "acorn-water" and honey 
on our bread; as the latter item was very plentiful, our 
repast might have been considerably less palatable. 

At the conclusion of "Kaffee-trinken," Alec and I once 
more fed the cattle. At six o'clock we milked, the Rus- 
sian starting at one end and I at the other of the long 
row of cows. Needless to say Alec milked about twenty- 
five out of the entire thirty cows, as I had never milked 
before in my life, and was a very awkward amateur. 
The milking finished, we had a good supper of barley 
soup made with milk, potatoes, pork, and sweet pastry, 
similar to pie crust, spread with sugar. After supper 
we fed the cattle again and our work for the day was 
finished. 

The other three Russians who worked in the fields 
under the supervision of the German completed their 
daily toil at eight o'clock every evening, but as we didn't 
milk until six it was usually ten before we went to bed 
and sometimes eleven. The Russians and myself slept 
in a little room on the second floor of the barn which 
had one window heavily barred, a table, and three beds. 
I slept "like a top" that night, for I was very tired, and 
when we were awakened at five o'clock I was extremely 
loath to rise, but prisoners cannot be choosers; so I 
hustled into my wooden shoes, big enough for Charlie 
Chaplin himself, and clumped noisily down the stairs. 
We fed the cows, collected the milk cans, donned our 
big hats, worn to keep the cow's tails out of our eyes, 
and went to work at the morning milking. This morn- 
ing I met with a mishap. One especially refractory 
"critter" kicked over the milk pail at a moment when I 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 29 

had relaxed my vigilance, but fortunately the pail had 
only about a quart of milk in it; so Alec promised not 
to tell the farmer. Milking was finished at eight-thirty 
and we had a breakfast of fried potatoes, bread, and 
coffee. At noon we milked again and at night repeated 
the performance (making three times a day). By the 
third day I had become an expert dairyman, but my 
fingers had lost practically all sense of feeling, the 
muscles not being used to such exercise. 

Four days after reaching the farm an Englishman 
who happened to hear that an American had arrived at 
the village came over to see me. While we were talking 
about the usual topics, the length of the war, conditions 
in Germany, and so forth, the farmer's daughter passed 
by. When "Tommy" had taken his departure, the girl 
asked if I could speak English as well as American. 
Upon my telling her that the two languages were one 
and the same she was very much astonished and ran to 
tell her father and mother the wonderful fact. This 
incident gives one an example of the common ignorance 
prevalent throughout Germany, especially among the 
rural laborers and industrial classes. 

In this village there were about twenty-five prisoners 
working, two Englishmen, twenty-two Russians, and 
one Yankee, myself. On Sunday morning, six days 
after my arrival at the farm, we all marched under 
guard into the farm which contained the prison-lager 
mentioned previously. Here roll-call was held and 
mail, packages, and money for the weekly labor were 
distributed. The average pay was one mark and eighty 
pfennigs or about forty-five cents in American money.' 
There was a canteen in the village where writing paper, 
German soap, tooth-paste, tooth-brushes, shoe-strings 
(not very necessary with wooden shoes), mirrors, 
pocket-books, and lemonade could be purchased by the 
prisoners. A bottle of lemonade, or sweetened water, 
cost twenty-five pfennigs, or six and a quarter cents. 



30 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

Lemonade was the only cheap thing purchasable at 
the canteen. All the other articles I have mentioned 
cost at least three marks, and the most of them four and 
five marks; so a prisoner was not apt to have a super- 
fluity of "luxuries." 

Roll-call ended, we marched back to our village 
guarded by what the Germans called "posterns," or 
post-men, as they delivered the mail throughout their 
particular districts. 

One evening, while we were milking, a guard entered 
the dairy and ordered me to accompany him to a neigh- 
boring town, where I was to be put to work in a restau- 
rant. As a matter of fact, I had been expecting a 
change of work for three days, because my fingers had 
become nearly void of the sense of touch, through milk- 
ing. The work finished, I had supper, changed my 
wooden shoes for the German boots, and started on 
my journey to the restaurant. After a walk of thirty 
minutes we arrived at the restaurant, which was oper- 
ated by a German officer as a beer-restaurant, catering 
to German soldiers exclusively. The officer was an 
Alsatian who had married a German girl, and his wife, 
two children, mother, and sister made up the family. 
Several waitresses augmented the number of people 
living in the restaurant, and the large kitchen was con- 
tinually in an uproar, being used for cooking, eating, 
and living-room. 

A Russian prisoner who had been an interpreter in a 
prison factory previous to his arrival here took me to 
his room, which we were to share in common. Upon 
learning my nationality he immediately told me in 
broken English that he had been in New York two 
years, and asked me if I knew Rockefeller, the capital- 
ist. Of course I told him that "John D." and I were 
great friends; so he was properly impressed. When I 
returned to the kitchen again, I met the officer and his 
family. It seems that they had been given their choice 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 31 

of an American or a Russian, and as they had all lived 
in England for eight years before the war, they natu- 
rally chose an American. I was overjoyed to learn that 
they couH speak English fluently, particularly the 
officer and his sister, who was sixteen years old. The 
latter had been born in France, went to England at 
eight years of age and in 1914, when the family left 
England for Germany, was obhged to study German at 
school before being able to speak her native language. 

All of the time I was at this place the family treated 
me as a guest, except for the fact of my work, which was 
demanded by government regulations. First, they 
asked me if I had eaten supper, and when I rephed in 
the affirmative they insisted that I eat again, so nothing 
loath I sat down to a meal of good soup, sausage meat, 
potatoes, and bread spread with honey. After supper 
I helped wash the dishes, breaking not a few, for my 
fingers were rather numb, and it was fully two weeks 
before my hands became perfectly normal again. 

The next morning the Russian and I brought some 
empty casks up from the wine cellar and rolled down 
some full ones. We cleaned up the garden, which was 
used on pleasant evenings for entertainments provided 
for the amusement of the soldiers who came to drink 
there. 

One day, a German soldier spoke to me in English 
and said he was an American citizen who, in August, 
1914, had gone to Holland for the purpose of visiting 
his parents. The German consul had forced him to 
go into Germany and enlist in the army, which illus- 
trated the breadth and scope of the German militaristic 
power. This soldier also told me that two American 
aeroplanes had been shot down only the day before. 
This last news elated me in one way, for I knew then 
that the Americans were really bombing the interior 
German towns, but of course I was very sorry to learn 
of their misfortune. 



32 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

The days and evenings passed along aU too quickly; 
music played at night in the restaurant or outside in the 
garden made me homesick, but "C'est la guerre." 

The German officer operated beside the restaurant 
a large dining hall for high military personages, and the 
Kaiser himself dined with his staff at this "Speisesalle" 
occasionally, but unfortunately for me I never saw the 
Kaiser as ten days was the limit of my stay at this place. 

One day I went to the school-house where the bread 
was distributed to draw the ration of bread for the 
restaurant. Twice a week the fifteen people who con- 
stituted the personnel of the restaurant were allowed 
two pounds of bread each. No guard accompanied me 
on this trip, and I could easily have escaped if I had had 
a compass and some shoes. Herr Drion, the German, 
had promised me a pair of leather shoes; so I thought 
that I would bide my time. This delay proved fatal to 
my chances for escape, as three days later I was sent 
to a prison factory at Cologne and heavily guarded until 
the war ended. 

To resume my account of the life at the restaurant: 
the day following my arrival the Russian and I went 
together under guard to bring potatoes for the restau- 
rant. This supply of potatoes was really the August 
ration, but the German was obliged to draw his ration 
in July, for he had no food to take the place of potatoes, 
and his July allowance had been consumed by the 
twelfth. Food conditions were extremely critical at 
this time. One example of the scarcity of food may be 
obtained from the following incident. A young girl, 
fourteen years old, whose sister was a waitress in the 
restaurant, came into the kitchen weeping bitterly. Her 
sister asked her why she was crying. The little girl told 
her that she had had nothing to eat for three days, as 
she had been ill and so could not work in the dynamite 
factory, where she was employed, and therefore had no 
money to buy food tickets. If one didn't work, one 






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INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 33 

didn't eat in Germany. The German woman who was 
cooking in the kitchen at the time heard the girl's pitiful 
story, and told her to sit down at the table. The cook 
then gave her bread, potatoes, and bean soup; so the 
little girl had a good meal, which made her very happy. 
When she had finished her supper the German officer 
gave her ten marks and sent her on her way rejoicing. 
Of course the rest of us had a little less to eat that night 
but we did not mind, for the little girl needed it so much 
more than we did. Many young children of both sexes 
worked in the dynamite factories in Wahn, and their 
faces, hands, and hair were all colored a ghastly yellow, 
which made them look like people from another world. 

The next day the German gave me a pair of shoes, 
and I decided to try to escape that evening without the 
aid of compass, for I could carry enough food with me 
to last two weeks. I knew where the bread and canned 
sausage meat were stored, and I planned to get away as 
soon as it was dark. But this was yet another instance 
of "Man proposes but God disposes"; for that same 
afternoon a guard came from Cologne with an order to 
take me to a wire factory at once. It seems that fate 
was against me ; so with a heart of lead I ate my supper 
before leaving for Cologne. The guard would not per- 
mit me to wear or even carry the leather shoes the Ger- 
man officer had given me ; so I had to put on my heavy 
military boots again, and I was very down-hearted when 
I said good-bye to the inmates of the restaurant, and 
started forth on another hike to the train which was to 
carry me into Cologne and a living death. 

We reached Cologne at nine o'clock, and rode by 
trolley car to the wire factory. During the trolley ride 
my guard became involved in an argument with the 
woman conductor as to whether or not he should pay a 
fare for me, and the guard lost, thereupon becoming 
very "grouchy." 

To my surprise and gratification ten Americans 



34 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

greeted me from their bunks in the barracks to which I 
was assigned. These Americans had all been captured 
at the Battle of Seicheprey, and had been sent direct 
from the Limburg prison camp to Cologne. They told 
me that the work was very hard, the hours long, and the 
soup poor, but I little realised even then the extent of 
my ill luck in being sentenced to this factory. 

Besides the ten Americans there were four hundred 
Russians, including Cossacks and Siberians, eighty 
Italians, and six Roumanians. The majority of the 
Russians had been working in Cologne for three years 
and some for four years, while the Italians had only 
been there since January, 1918, having been captured 
in October, 1917, in the terrific fighting along the 
Piave River. 

At the time of my arrival in this factory the prisoners 
were living in two barracks, with the majority of the 
Russians occupying one barracks, and the remainder, 
together with the Italians and the Americans, sleeping 
in the other barracks. The bunks were made of iron, 
having two tiers, and the sleeping equipment consisted 
of the usual thin mattress composed of paper, rags, and 
thread, two blankets, a light and a heavy one, and a 
pillow, containing the same "insides" as the mattress. 

The eating barracks was located about three hundred 
yards from the two sleeping barracks, and contained 
long tables lined with wooden benches, a soup-bowl for 
each one and a canteen. - I might add that a gun-rack 
adorned the side of the building, in which the guards 
placed their guns while we were eating, retaining their 
side-arms only. But, needless to say, there was always 
quite a distance interspersed by Prussians between the 
prisoners and the guns. 

For bathing facilities we had running water in all 
the barracks, and once a week hot shower baths at the 
different sections where we worked in the factory. In 
this respect we fared much better than our comrades at 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 35 

the front, but there was not one of us who would not 
have given ten years from his hfe to have been back in 
the trenches with the American army. 

The soup served us had as a basis cow-turnips but 
occasionally a potato or a bean would find its way into 
the composition. On Tuesday and Friday noons we had 
fish in the soup, and on Sunday evenings a sweetened 
barley soup usually served for our supper, with once in 
a great while some prunes or figs added to this latter 
combination. This factory employed twenty-five thou- 
sand people in contrast to eight thousand before the 
war, and covered forty acres of ground, having ten 
gigantic smoke-stacks towering skyward. I was 
assigned to the night shift, which worked from seven at 
night until seven in the morning. Four of the ten 
Americans were working nights then, and the other six 
days, although two were in the factory hospital with a 
high fever at this particular time. 

Generally speaking the work in the factory was 
divided as follows : shoveling coal or salts, turning down 
wire coils on a machine, pushing trucks running on 
narrow-gauge rails loaded with wire to different sec- 
tions of the factory, electrical labor, motor mechanics, 
pouring zinc, copper, or aluminum, unloading same 
from freight cars, firing furnaces, dipping hot wire, and 
working in the prisoners' kitchen. 

The first night I worked shoveling salts about fifteen 
feet from a huge blast furnace. My task was to fill four 
iron cars, three by five by two, running on a narrow- 
gauge track, with salts from a pile, requiring a pick and 
shovel to dislodge the mass. As soon as a car was filled, 
one of the prisoners who was working in the adjoining 
room at the dipping vats helped me push the loaded car 
into the dipping room, where an electric crane operated 
by a German civilian lifted the load of salts and dumped 
it into one of the vats. The coils of wire were immersed 



36 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

in these vats, thereby softening the wire, which was later 
turned down to size on machines. 

We worked from seven o'clock until eight o'clock, 
when we were allowed fifteen minutes for "Kaffee- 
trinken." After returning to work our labors con- 
tinued until midnight, at which time soup was served in 
huge kettles and an hour's rest was granted. At one 
o'clock we started work again and stopped for fifteen 
minutes at four o'clock, ending the night's work at 
fifteen minutes to seven o'clock. The guards called 
"Austreten" and we were checked off, marched to the 
dining hall where our morning soup was served, and 
then cleaned the mess hall before departing to the 
sleeping barracks. (While working nights in the fac- 
tory we were issued a piece of "blut-wurst" twice a 
week, which constituted our entire meat ration during 
two weeks, for no meat was issued to the day shifts. A 
German civilian was permitted to purchase a quarter 
of a pound of meat per week.) Before being allowed 
to sleep we were obliged to clean the barracks, so it was 
usually nine o'clock when we finally turned in. At 
eleven o'clock the sentries awakened us and we fell in 
for mess, after which we cleaned sleeping barracks and 
mess hall, and returned to sleep for three hours, until six 
o'clock, when soup was given us and a ration of bread to 
go to work all night. We Americans ate our bread the 
second it was issued, for while working some thieving 
Russian would steal the bread at the slightest oppor- 
tunity, for there seemed to be no honor among the Rus- 
sians and a great many of them were "stool pigeons" for 
the Germans. The Russians even went so far as to 
betray their own comrades if they thought that they 
themselves would be benefited. 

I worked at the salts-pile for a week, when I was 
transferred to the wire section. My work was to push 
trucks loaded with wire taken from the ovens to differ- 
ent parts of the factory. One night while working in 



INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE AT DARMSTADT 37 

this section the pieces of sacking which I used for an 
apron and hand-cloths to protect my hands from the 
hot wire were stolen. I reported the matter to the 
guard, who ordered me to work without them. I refused 
and the guard drew his bayonet, lunging at me, but I 
evaded the thrust and ran from the office with the Boche 
in hot pursuit. Dodging under some wire I escaped 
his notice and saved my own life. Later, upon return- 
ing to the office, sacks were given to me and I resumed 
work. Although the Prussianism in the guard had 
passed away I expected to be sumimoned to the main 
office for dungeon duty, but to my surprise and gratifi- 
cation no further report was made of the matter. After 
a week at this section the foreman said to me, "If you do 
not turn out more work I shall have you transferred to a 
worse place." I thought to myself that there could not 
be any "worse place," so continued to do as little work 
as possible until one night the sentry ordered me to go 
to the copper-shop. A copper block when completed 
resembled in size and shape an American railroad tie. 
Copper, being very much in demand and not available, 
the Germans solved the problem by requisitioning all 
the skillets, frying pans, and all other household utensils 
to melt them in the "fiery furnace." Statues of the 
Kaiser, Von Hindenburg, and many other Germanic 
heroes, in fact everything containing any copper was 
melted up for war purposes. When I first saw the 
Kaiser statues being broken to pieces I could not believe 
my eyes, but it was true and showed the beginning of 
internal discord and lack of unity. 

About this time, the first week in August, the soup 
became much worse than usual and we all thought that 
we would soon be too weak to work, but on the 6th of 
August, a never to be forgotten date, food from the 
American Red Cross reached us, practically saving our 
lives. As American interpreter at this factory it was 
my duty to see that the boxes were distributed, signed 



38 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

for, and checked off by the German authorities at the 
factory. The packages contained corned beef, roast 
beef, salmon, peas, corn, hard-bread, coffee, sugar, milk, 
jam, prunes, rice, cigarettes or tobacco, and soap. 

Occasionally some of the articles had been appro- 
priated by the Germans who handled the packages en 
route to the factory, but usually the contents remained 
intact. These packages came to us two or three times 
a month, and we never ceased to bless the work of the 
American Red Cross. 

AIR RAIDS 

Two or three times a week, after it had become dark, 
the Allied aeroplanes would fly over Cologne, dropping 
bombs with great accuracy and doing terrible damage. 
Usually the raiders would arrive between ten and eleven 
o'clock. When the aeroplanes were discovered by the 
German sentries in the anti-aircraft lookout posts, the 
factory whistles shrieked a warning, all lights were ex- 
tinguished, and we all hurried to the bomb-proof cellars 
where we awaited the termination of the bombing. 
Generally, the raids were from one to two hours' dura- 
tion. The anti-aircraft guns on the factory always 
opened up on the aeroplanes and huge searchlights 
swept the heavens in an effort to locate the planes. 
From German civilians I learned that on one raid the 
Allied aeroplanes had dropped bombs on a dynamite 
factory, killing many of the night workers and totally 
destroying the factory. Another time a bomb exploded 
on the roof of a trolley car, causing many casualties. 
We were always glad to have the aeroplanes come over, 
for it gave us definite assurance that the Allies would 
soon demoralize the already wavering spirit of the Ger- 
man people, and we did not have to work during the 
bombing. The attitudes of the civilians who worked in 
the factory, and the inhabitants of the houses in the 



SUNDAYS 39 

immediate vicinity of the factory, who sought protection 
during the air raids in the factory bomb-proof cellar, 
were varied. But in most cases they took a cynical and 
fataHstic view of the raids, saying that as long as they 
themselves were not killed it did not matter how often 
the raiders appeared. By that time the Germans were 
so "fed up" with the war that they did not care who won, 
America or Germany, so long as the strife ended. No 
doubt the Boche would have been willing to let the 
"M. P.'s" win the war. One morning a German boy 
told me that they had brought down six American 
planes the night before, but I knew he was mistaken, for 
no German newspaper reported the incident, which was 
positive proof that the boy had been intentionally mis- 
informed. 

SUNDAYS 

Sunday was a day to look forward to with mingled 
feelings of relief and dread. Relief, for we knew that 
the awful drudgery of the work would cease for a brief 
period. But dread, as the awful monotony of a day 
with practically no means at all for occupying one's 
mind haunted us throughout the entire week. For 
breakfast we had a sweetened coffee in place of the cow- 
turnip soup. About ten o'clock all the prisoners formed 
ranks and marched to an open square at one end of the 
factory grounds. On these occasions we were joined by 
three Frenchmen who worked in a near-by factory. 
These French prisoners imparted to us a little news of 
the war as given in the Swiss newspapers smuggled over 
the German border and secured by the French from 
pro- Ally sympathizers. Upon reaching the formation 
place we formed in a hollow square with the German 
officers in the center. The names of the men who were 
to work at night for the next week were called off, and 
any other notices relative to turning in of clothing were 
issued at this time. Of course the majority of the 



40 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

prisoners did not understand a word of German, so in- 
terpreters were needed. We stood before the officer, 
who was a sergeant-major, a rank which in the German 
army has much authority, while he talked, and then re- 
turning to our respective units, American, French, 
Italian, or Russian, we imparted our information for 
their benefit. However, the prisoners' numbers were 
usually called off in German for assignment to work, 
and everyone soon learned his own number. There were 
a few Russians who never could seem to "verstehen" 
their numbers in German; so they were continually 
being reprimanded by the German officer, and in some 
instances confined in a dungeon, as the Russians were 
given scant consideration throughout the entire period 
of their imprisonment. 

After the notices, the pay books were given out to 
each prisoner, and the weekly "salary" averaged five 
marks (about a dollar and a quarter), although some of 
the Russians received as high as a hundred marks for 
working as expert machinists and electricians. Need- 
less to add these Russians were traitors to their country, 
for by their labor they helped the enemy. The pay con- 
sisted of paper stamps of different colors pasted in a 
little paper notebook, yellow for one mark, blue for 
twenty pfennigs (one-fifth of a mark), and red for ten 
pfennigs. 

One particular Sunday before the "money" had been 
distributed the German, officer had an idea that he 
wanted the prisoners' hair clipped off short; so he 
ordered one of the sergeants to procure a pair of hair- 
clippers for this purpose. The sergeant commenced his 
task on a big, tall Russian whom he made go out into 
the center of the square and kneel while the ceremony 
was being performed. It surely was comical to see the 
sergeant, who happened to be the shortest one of the 
German officers, hacking away at the Russian's hair 
with the dull clippers, perspiring freely at the job, for 



A LUCKY ACCIDENT 41 

the Russian's hair was very wiry, and resented being so 
ruthlessly treated. The prisoner was making all sorts 
of grimaces and trying to maintain his dignity, which of 
course was rather difficult under the existing circum- 
stances. When the job was finally completed, the ser- 
geant continued the hair-cutting farce, taking the men 
in rotation. But as there were six hundred prisoners, 
he soon became tired and contented himself with 
running the clippers through the middle of his victim's 
hair. By the time the Boche came to the Americans, 
who were near the end of the formation, he satisfied 
himself with barbering only three of the eleven Yanks. 

Following this formation we were marched to the 
mess hall and partook of an especially "nice" soup, 
whose "niceness" consisted of an extra bean or piece of 
cow-turnip being added to its basis of cow-turnips. 

After dinner we sat around the mess hall or went to 
the barracks until five o'clock, when soup was again 
served and our Red Cross packages, if any had arrived, 
were distributed. At this time the canteen was open 
and occasionally wine was sold, and as a result the 
Russians ended the day by two or three hand-to-hand 
fights, landing themselves in the dungeon if the German 
authorities happened to be in the humor for it. There 
was one Cossack who, as soon as he became intoxicated, 
started to dance, and his comrades who had violin, banjo, 
or jew's-harp, would play for him. I had never seen 
any clog dancing to equal it before this time and do not 
expect to in the future. The majority of the Russians 
viewed his performance with indifference, but some 
applauded heartily. 

A LUCKY ACCIDENT 

On the 29th of August, while loading zinc blocks on 
a truck, I broke the little finger on my right hand, and 
reported the accident to the sergeant, who happened to 
be in the office of the section in which I was working at 



42 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

the time. He grabbed the finger, manipulating it 
several different ways, and finally declared that it was 
not broken and told me to spit on it and it would be all 
right. I told him I was going to the infirmary. Just 
then a sentry came along, and the sergeant, seeing that 
I was not to be bullied, ordered the sentry to take me to 
the infirmary. Arriving there I had my finger put into 
splints, but needless to say I did not return to work. 

The next day a guard took me outside of the factory 
into the town where there was an X-ray hospital. 
While walking to this hospital we passed the great city 
kitchen where potatoes, cow- turnips, bread, and cabbage 
were daily distributed to the inhabitants of that district 
in meager portions. Some of the faces of the people I 
saw hurrying to the kitchen I shall never forget. The 
look of despondency and desperation on their starved 
features gave one an idea of the terrible price the people 
of Germany were paying in order to carry on the war. 
Little children, thin and emaciated, trudged along hold- 
ing their mother's hand, eyeing every passer-by with a 
wistful, hungry look that made a feeling of pity and 
commiseration enter my heart even though they were 
the hated Boche. 

As we walked along I noticed one window in which 
was displayed a basket of eggs marked twenty-nine 
marks a dozen, or about fifty cents apiece. In the 
grocery stores a few cabbages and cow-turnips would 
be displayed, while the remainder of the window con- 
tained scrub-brushes, brooms, wooden shoes, and other 
non-eatables. The butcher shops were entirely devoid 
of meat, and many of them were closed. No doubt in 
Berlin and the larger cities of Germany farther in the 
interior food was obtainable if one had the money. But 
in the great majority of the smaller sections of the coun- 
try it was not so much a question of money as the ability 
to produce tickets valued at so many ounces of cabbage, 
bread, or cow-turnips. 



FRENCH FROM ST. QUENTIN 43 

The following daj?- the guard took me to the city hos- 
pital where a German doctor who had received the 
X-ray taken the day before manipulated my finger for 
a few minutes, bound it with paper, and ordered me to 
be returned to the factory. This procedure was re- 
peated for two weeks, after which time the doctor pro- 
nounced me able to resume work. But I could not and 
would not work with my finger so poorly set; so the 
officer in command of the factory ordered me to go to 
the infirmary every day to assist the Russian interpreter 
in his duties of taking care of the sick prisoners. The 
sick list was so small that the Russian could manage it 
easily without any assistance; so time dragged inter- 
minably day after day until the third week in Septem- 
ber, when a hundred French prisoners who had been 
captured at St. Quentin in August arrived at the fac- 
tory for work. 

FRENCH FROM ST. QUENTIN 

Among these prisoners was a French corporal-major, 
who because of his rank did not work. He went to the 
infirmary every morning as I did. He could speak 
English quite well, and we soon became fast friends. 
He told me news of the fighting at the front, which en- 
couraged us all greatly, and he estimated that the war 
would be over by Christmas. Later events proved his 
reckoning to be a month too long. 

Two weeks after the arrival of the French one poor 
fellow was killed by being accidentally electrocuted 
during his labors in one of the engine rooms. All the 
interpreters were ordered to go to the funeral. Money 
was solicited from the prisoners with which to purchase 
wreaths. On the following day two of us were taken to 
a flower shop in order to bring the wreaths to the fac- 
tory. After procuring the flowers, we started on our 
return, but as soon as we had stepped out from the 



44 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

florist's a crowd gathered and followed us to the fac- 
tory. The casket was brought forth and the march to 
the cemetery commenced, but the crowd soon dispersed 
when they found that the cemetery was located five kilo- 
meters outside the city. 

The German sergeant was in charge of the little pro- 
cession, and when we reached the place of burial, the 
sergeant in his Prussian ignorance gave the crucifix to 
a Russian who was of the Jewish faith. Nothing could 
be done to remedy the matter, but no doubt the poor 
Frenchman would have turned over in his casket if he 
had known of the incongruity. When the body was 
being lowered into the grave many sober thoughts 
passed through my mind ; what a terrible way to die in 
an enemy country, practically alone, and probably his 
folks would never hear of his last resting place. I won- 
dered if such would be my fate or if Providence would 
have a more happy sequel to my imprisonment in store 
for me. Following the ceremony we all marched back 
to the factory unusually sober and uncommunicative. 

One day shortly after this episode, while in the in- 
firmary, I picked up a German newspaper, and read 
on the front page an official notice of hand-to-hand 
fighting in the streets of Laon between German and 
French troops. My heart gave a great leap, for my 
division previous to my capture had held the lines 
together with the French Eleventh Army Corps in the 
Chemin des Dames sector directly opposite from the 
town of Laon, which the Germans held at that time. 
Now I knew that the Allies must have advanced quite 
a number of kilometers to be engaged in close fighting 
in Laon itself. The Russian interpreter, who was 
sitting next to me, noted my exclamation of joy, and 
asked me the cause of it. When I told him of the fight- 
ing in Laon he further encouraged me by replying that 
unless the war ended inside of three months he thought 
that the Allies would actually be in the city of Cologne, 



BEGINNING OF THE END 45 

for from all information in his possession the Allied 
advance was extremely rapid on all fronts. 

Upon my return to the barracks that night I com- 
municated the good news to my fellow Americans, and 
we celebrated by eating an unusually large supper from 
our Red Cross packages, which happened to have 
arrived that very evening. One American went on sick 
call the next day as a result of the "banquet," but he 
was sent out to work chuclding at the remark of the 
German doctor, "You Americans, you eat too much, 
and work too little." 

Indigestion, among the Allied prisoners in Germany, 
was such a rare illness that the word had almost been 
dropped from our vocabulary. 

So the days followed their monotonous path one 
after the other. We received a letter from the Y. M. 
C. A. in Switzerland inquiring about our needs. I 
answered it asking for books, but of course the war 
ended before we could receive them. The only book 
which we had to read was a dog-eared copj?- of "Huckle- 
berry Finn," by Mark Twain, given to us by a kind- 
hearted German civilian who worked in the factory. 
The German had stolen this book from a library in the 
city, and we were really grateful for his theft. 

BEGINNING OF THE END 

The latter part of October the German newspapers, 
in an effort to keep the people united to the last minute, 
declared in bold headlines that "Germany must and 
would fight to the last man and the last pfennig to save 
their honor and their country." However, the people 
took these exhortations indifferently, remarking that 
the end was near, as the Socialistic spirit combined with 
the increasingly powerful desire for a peace, victorious 
or otherwise, had made them wish for a termination of 
hostilities at any price. 



46 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

An undercurrent of revolution was slowly but in- 
sidiously gaining strength among the soldiery and civil- 
ians, although up to this time no violent outburst had 
occurred. 

A conversation between one of the Americans who 
was a machine gunner and a German soldier who 
worked in the factory typifies the feeling at that time. 
The German asked the American if he operated a 
machine gun, and when the Yank replied in the affirma- 
tive, the Boche said, "We expect to revolt soon; will 
you handle a machine gun for us?" But the Yank, 
thinking that this was just an attempt to incriminate 
him and then shoot him, told the Hun to return to his 
work and forget about it. We always had to be careful 
what we said or did while in Germany, for one false 
word or step would make us liable to instant death. 
For example, a Russian prisoner, thinking that a Ger- 
man civilian who worked with him in the factory seemed 
really friendly, asked him to buy a compass for him. 
The German acquiesced, and two days later brought in 
a compass for the Russian. However, before giving 
out the compass the Hun reported the transaction to 
the officer in charge of the factory. As a result, on the 
following Sunday the Russian was exposed and sen- 
tenced to a month in the dungeon on bread and water. 
Another incident, illustrative of the rigidity of rules 
governing the prisoners happened to myself shortly 
after my arrival at the factory. I was working at a 
retort pouring zinc, and a few feet from me worked a 
German girl pouring aluminum. On one side of the 
fire was a huge shield of sheet iron to keep the heat 
from reaching the cups into which the liquid was poured. 
This shield fell down, and I walked over to pick it up. 
While doing so I asked the girl if she had always done 
this kind of work. She told me that before the war she 
did not work at all, but that many, many people were 
forced to work for the "Vaterland" after war was de- 



BEGINNING OF THE END 47 

clared. Just then the sentry came along and seeing me 
talking to the girl motioned for me to go to him, for he 
knew I was the interpreter and could understand what 
he would have to say. First, he asked my number, and 
then inquired if I knew that it was forbidden to talk to 
the women in the factory. I told him that, as I had only 
been in the factory a short time, as he very well knew, 
since he was the guard who had escorted me there, 
I did not know the rules. This explanation apparently 
satisfied him, for the officer did not mention the incident 
on the following Sunday at our customary assembly. 

Events moved rapidly, according to the reports pub- 
lished in the German newspapers ; Bulgaria's surrender 
followed by Turkey's capitulation and soon after 
Austria's downfall was accompanied in the German 
newspapers by cries of "It is no use to fight longer, our 
allies have deserted us and the enemy advances rapidly 
toward our beloved homeland. Let us request an 
armistice and plead for leniency." Great was my joy 
upon reading these words, for I knew that my sojourn 
in the land of the Hun would soon be terminated. 

On November 9, the revolution commenced and all 
the guards tore off their shoulder straps, thereby sig- 
nifying that they were no longer soldiers, loyal to the 
government, and put red bands on their collars and 
caps, as a symbol of revolt. They even went so far as 
to tear off the shoulder straps from the officer's uniform 
and ridicule him openly, showing absolutely no respect 
for their superior officers wherever they chanced to 
meet them. 

In the streets outside the factory much rioting took 
place, and high German officers were halted by the 
common soldiers, deprived of their boots, physically ill- 
treated, and even shot if the officer who happened to be 
the victim tried to take refuge behind his dignity. 

Machine guns had been placed in the factory to pre- 
vent the prisoners from joining in the fracas, and we 



48 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

Americans thought that it would be the height of folly 
to go out and get killed now when the war was practi- 
cally over. 

Of course the loyal government troops were dis- 
patched to the scene of the rioting, and the revolution- 
ists dispersed after putting up rear-guard fighting, only 
to form in some other locality and continue their 
depredations. 

KRIEGS FERTIGS 

Wires were cut and communication with the outside 
world was very uncertain ; so we did not really know the 
armistice had commenced until eleven o'clock on No- 
vember 12, 1918. The day on which all America cele- 
brated the ending of the war so happily and gloriously, 
was passed by us very quietly, for although we expected 
the war to end inside of a month we never dreamed that 
it actually had ended at that time. 

The German papers printed the armistice terms, and 
in commenting on them pleaded that the revolution 
might cease, so that Germany might present a united 
and determined front at the peace conference in order 
to save the "Vaterland." 

The press emphasized the fact that Germany would 
disintegrate entirely if she did not heed the call to unite, 
in a firm and stable government, pointing out the lesson 
which Russia had given to her and all the world, being 
plunged into a "Red" plague. 

At eleven o'clock on Tuesday, November 12, we all 
stopped work and went to our barracks. 

Immediately following the noonday meal we turned 
in our blankets, bed-sacks, spoons, soup-bowls, numbers, 
and working clothes. 

To the great surprise and gratification of the Ameri- 
cans our American uniforms, sent to us from Switzer- 
land, arrived in the afternoon, and it surely was great 
to get back into the good old doughboy togs. The shoes 




^ 



o 



3 

.2 
'P 






I 

c3 



3 

<1 



KRIEGS FERTIGS 49 

afforded us the greatest satisfaction. To think that we 
had real leather shoes on our feet after seven months 
of trying to navigate in wooden shoes ! It felt as if we 
were walking on air and did not have any feet at all. 

We were assembled in the square as if it were Sun- 
day, and the owners of the factory, in company with the 
officer, addressed us through our interpreters, wishing 
us the best of luck upon our return to our native land. 
They assured us of Germany's good will toward the 
world, now that the war was over, and especially toward 
America. Propaganda still seemed to be one of Ger- 
many's favorite tricks. 

Following the addresses, our pay for the month was 
given out with an extra month's pay as a bonus ; imagine 
the sarcasm in giving a bonus. The German money was 
like so much paper to us, and we hoped to be out of the 
country before the week elapsed, so that the marks, 
varying from twenty-five to thirty-five, plus a month's 
pay which had been retained, did not create any bursts 
of enthusiasm from us. 

On the morning of the thirteenth the soup contained 
plenty of potatoes and beans, and half a loaf of bread 
was issued to each prisoner (more propaganda). 

We left the factory at seven o'clock via box-cars, for 
Limburg, arriving there at ten o'clock in the evening. 

The Russians did not go to the prison camp, however, 
but remained on the train which was to take them to the 
northern border, as in repatriating the Russians care 
had been used to avoid sending them into other countries 
for the simple reason that Germany wished to have 
more discord and discontent in Russia. 

We hiked out to the camp and there met nine other 
Americans, including those who had been on the food 
committee. They told us that we would probably leave 
the camp the following day, but when we did leave, it 
was on the fifteenth and we all left together, making a 
total of eighteen. 



50 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

The fourteenth we spent in camp and went to the 
storehouse for some Red Cross packages to carry along 
with us on our journey, for we had no idea how long it 
would take us to reach the American lines after leaving 
Limburg. 

Our astonishment was unequaled when we saw at the 
storehouse approximately one thousand Red Cross 
boxes piled up in the rooms there. Our committee told 
us that the German authorities had prevented them 
from sending out the boxes. 

WESTWARD BOUND 

At five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifteenth we 
left Limburg together with a great number of English, 
French, and Italians. We boarded a train composed 
of third-class coaches and commenced our never to be 
forgotten journey toward France, our comrades who 
had survived the awful struggle, and eventually home. 

No pen can fittingly describe the feelings of emotion 
which surged in our breasts as we pictured in our minds 
the repatriation. Question after question occurred to 
us: How many of our old friends in the regiment 
would we meet? Would those with the regiment be 
changed so that we would not know them? 

The train was just about to start when a straggling 
mass of Germans hove into sight coming from the direc- 
tion of the front and bringing with them two American 
prisoners. We managed to talk to the Americans, who 
informed us that they had been captured one hour 
before the war ended. Rather unlucky, they thought, 
but we told them to cheer up, for in a-few days they 
would be in France, and we gave them all the food and 
cigarettes they could carry. We thought somewhat of 
telling them to jump on the train with us, but on second 
consideration deemed it better not to, for they might 



• WESTWARD BOUND 51 

reach the border and be sent back, for we were all 
counted as we left Limburg in order that the Germans 
could make a report on the number of men repatriated 
daily. If we had only known that there really was not 
any "border" and that no check was taken of us after 
leaving Metz we would surely have told the Americans 
to come along with us. 

Arriving at Metz the following noon we encountered 
two German regiments hastening to the rear, who in- 
formed us that the Americans would be in Metz by the 
next day. The regiments had thrown away all their 
equipment and carried only a package or two containing 
food. Red straps and red bands proclaimed that they 
also had joined the revolution. In fact, from Limburg 
to Metz, we passed train after train bearing the red 
flag and filled with cheering, shouting soldiers, crying, 
"Down with the Kaiser." 

After an hour's wait at Metz we continued on the 
train until we arrived at a point about fifteen kilometers 
from Metz. We detrained and commenced our hike to 
the American lines. 

The first people who greeted us on our journey were 
the French Alsatians, who directed us on our way with 
tears in their eyes but cheers on their lips. 

Many of the Allied prisoners died on the waj^side 
from exhaustion, but no Americans were lost from our 
little band of eighteen, which again gives the American 
Red Cross the everlasting thanks of those of us who 
returned to France. 

At eight o'clock we were halted by a sentry as fol- 
lows: "Where you all goin'?" Believe me, it surely was 
good to hear the darky's voice, and the officer of the day 
was soon summoned. We found that we had entered 
the American lines at a point not many kilometers from 
Seicheprej^ which had now become a rail-head. The 
Ninety-second Division, composed of colored troops, 
held the lines here, and would have played an important 



52 A YANKEE PRISONER IN HUNLAND 

part in the contemplated drive on Metz if the war had 
not ended at this time. 

That night we had some good old army chow, and all 
of us slept in feather beds, not awakening until noon of 
the following day, which was the 17th of November, 
1918. 

Some of us were sent to an evacuation hospital for a 
few days' rest and from there to Toul. 

On December 1st we rejoined our regiment and sailed 
for America four months later with a song of prayerful 
thanksgiving in our hearts that we had been permitted 
to pass through our experiences and return to our 
homes and families. 



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